Internet access through TVs is typically provided by essentially programming the TV (often referred to as an Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV) as though it were a computer executing a browser. Such Internet access is thus uncontrolled except as a firewall or filtering program might block certain sites.
As understood herein, uncontrolled Internet access may not be desirable in the context of a TV. A firewall or filtering program may not always be installed on the TV and even when one is installed, access remains much more uncontrolled than conventional TV programming traditionally has expected. Also, a locally installed filter can be unloaded or defeated by a user.
Accordingly, uncontrolled Internet access has several drawbacks. From a viewer's standpoint, exposure to inappropriate subject matter particularly when young viewers are watching is one concern; a much lower threshold of quality screening is another. That is, while many TV shows might not be widely considered as “quality” shows, nonetheless a TV program is usually much more selectively screened than, say, an Internet video. The expectations of TV viewers for such higher level quality screening as a consequence cannot be met by simply providing unfettered Internet access through the TV. Furthermore, TV-related entities, from content providers, manufacturers, and carriers, in most cases derive no benefit from the extension of TV to the Internet, such as, e.g., might be derived, as understood herein, by pay-per-view based on one or more options.
As further recognized herein, it may be desirable to control an IPTV client with a second, control device that might have more convenient user input devices than the IPTV, or for other reasons. Present principles understand that such control may be effected by means of web pages, but as also recognized herein it would be desirable to serve such web pages from a third party Internet server, to avoid filling up storage in the IPTV and further to yield flexibility and robustness in being able to update web pages tailored for a variety of models without having to modify the software of the IPTV.
As still further recognized herein, however, an IPTV or other home server for which control is sought using a web page sourced from another server might not be publicly accessible on the Internet, or might not have a publicly known address even if it is. This raises a cross domain issue, which arises from a restriction which browsers impose to protect users from unauthorized usage of confidential information. Essentially, for security reasons hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) requests from a client can only be made to the server that serves up the page to the client, and not to a different server on a different domain. On the Internet, this is resolved by using the server as a proxy to convey information to the intended third party server, but as mentioned above, if the third party resides on a home network with a network address that is not available to the proxy, this method is no longer applicable, because the proxy server on the internet has no way of contacting a server that is on a home network.